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Israeli forces have raided al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, following days of heavy attacks in the area surrounding the complex in Gaza City.

Israel’s military said early on Wednesday morning that it was carrying out an “operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa. Calling the assault a “targeted operation” on Gaza’s largest medical facility, it said the raid was based on Israeli and United States intelligence.

Israel accuses Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, of using the hospital as a base. Hamas rejects the claim. Israel has not produced evidence to back up its assertion.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers entered the facility while tanks were stationed in the yard of the medical complex, Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum said, reporting from Khan Younis on Wednesday. The raid “is considered to be very risky and dangerous as inside the hospital there are around 7,500 Palestinians including patients, doctors and displaced people,” he said.

Dr Munir al-Bursh, the general director of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces searched the basement of al-Shifa and entered the surgical and emergency buildings within the complex.

Dr Ahmed El Mokhallalati, a surgeon inside the facility, reported heavy gunfire and explosions could be heard in the compound. “We saw the [Israeli] tanks and the bulldozers on the centre’s campus,” he told Al Jazeera.

About 700 patients remain at the hospital, including about 100 in critical condition, Mokhallalati reported. More than 1,000 medical staff are also trapped on site, but they are unable to treat patients due to a shortage of medicine and fuel.

Thousands of civilians displaced by Israel’s five-week bombardment of Gaza, which has killed more than 11,200 Palestinians, are also inside al-Shifa Hospital.

Mokhallalati described the fear that has taken hold among the thousands trapped in the facility. “We don’t know what they will do to us. We don’t know whether they will kill people or terrorise them. We know all the propaganda is lies, and they know as well as we do that there is nothing at al-Shifa medical centre.”

‘Barbaric crime’

The area around al-Shifa has been battered by multiple Israeli attacks for weeks. The Israeli government has issued warnings to evacuate the facility. However, Palestinian medical officials have rejected the order, saying they cannot leave their patients behind.

Amid the raid, Palestinian Authority Health Minister Dr Mai al-Kaila said, in a statement published by the Palestinian news agency Wafa, that Israeli forces “are committing a new crime against humanity, medical staff, and patients”.

The Palestinian government holds Israeli forces “responsible for the lives of the medical staff, patients, and displaced people in the al-Shifa complex,” she added.

Hamas said that it holds Israel and US President Joe Biden responsible for the implications of the raid, labelling it a “barbaric crime against a medical facility protected by the fourth Geneva Convention”.

“The Israeli occupation and everyone who colluded with it to kill children, patients and innocent civilians will be held accountable,” the group said in a statement.

The US said it “has information” that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use Gaza’s hospitals, including al-Shifa, “to conceal and support their military operations and to hold hostages”.

At the same time, Washington has continued to offer words of caution, Reuters reported.

A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said: “We do not support striking a hospital from the air and we don’t want to see a firefight in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people, sick people trying to get medical care they deserve are caught in the crossfire.”

Hamas has denied it uses Gaza’s hospitals as a base and has invited the United Nations to send independent investigators to verify that Israel’s claims are “falsehoods”.

Ardi Imseis, an international law expert at Queen’s University in Canada, said Israel carries the burden to “produce evidence” and prove its claim that the hospital has been used by Hamas as a base.

“The object of the attack is a civilian object. Until such time that the Israelis provide proof that it has been converted into a military object, the civilian nature of the object does not change,” he said.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that “the Israeli government has put forward no evidence that would justify stripping hospitals of their special protections under international humanitarian law”.

Even if Israel’s justifications for attacking hospitals are taken at “face value,” Shakir said, “international humanitarian law only allows attacking hospitals if room is made for safe evacuation”.

He added: “The reality here is there is no safe place to go in Gaza.”

Al Shifa Hospital has become much more than just a hospital during this war.

It is Gaza’s biggest hospital, a sprawling complex of 22 acres, housing emergency and neonatal facilities as well as specialist units.

But after Israel’s invasion of Gaza it has also become a refugee camp where thousands have sought sanctuary and shelter in its courtyards, corridors and wards from Israel’s unprecedented bombardment of Gaza.

More than that it has become a place that is symbolic of Palestinian resilience where doctors have performed heroically, saving lives in the most difficult of conditions.

Follow live: Israeli forces enter al Shifa hospital in ‘targeted operation

Dwindling fuel supplies have led to incubators being switched off, say officials there, and the deaths of a number of newborns.

The hospital is also becoming an outdoor morgue. Bodies have been piling up because of their sheer number and the lack of power to refrigerate them.

Israelis claim these reports cannot be trusted because Hamas controls the hospital’s staff. They almost certainly cannot speak entirely freely and when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 it fired hundreds of staff affiliated with the more moderate Palestinian Fatah faction.

But what isn’t in doubt is the enormous pressure the hospital has been operating under and the extraordinary courage of its doctors and nurses. They have been operating against the odds as the war has closed in around them.

But al Shifa has a dark side, says Israel, and that claim has been backed up by US intelligence. Both claim the hospital is used by Hamas as a military headquarters in what would be a clear violation of the laws of war.

Israel, which has now carried out a targeted raid on al Shifa, claims there is a vast tunnel network under the hospital extending out across the Gaza Strip. It has produced diagrams of what it calls a subterranean terror complex. It says it believes hostages may be being held under the hospital and weapons arsenals and command centres are down there too.

Read more:
What protection do hospitals have in wartime?
How the Kibbutz Be’eri attack unfolded

It is hard to know for sure. There have long been claims of Hamas activity in the hospital. Ten years ago Amnesty International accused it of using wards to murder and torture rivals.

Western journalists have described Hamas fighters wandering its wards. More recently though, visiting medical professionals have expressed scepticism the hospital was being used by Hamas in a military sense anymore.

When Hamas violently seized control of Gaza in 2007 it allegedly purged al Shifa of doctors who were not compliant to its rule.

It has undoubtedly been used as a propaganda pawn by both sides in this conflict and that has intensified in the last week as Israeli forces encircled it.

Hospitals have protection from attack under the rules of war. But that immunity is forfeited if they are used as military bases.

Israel will need to prove its claims after it captures al Shifa. Otherwise this assault on a medical complex will be seen as a war crime when the reckoning comes for this conflict.

Cormorants have been a constant presence in Youichiro Adachi’s life, and when he was young, he cried whenever one of his family’s birds died.

Now 48, Adachi still cares deeply for his birds, drawing them out of their baskets each morning and stroking their long necks to confirm their health and maintain a bond.

“For me, cormorants are my partners,” he said.

Adachi is the 18th generation of his family to be a master cormorant fisherman and one of about 50 people in Japan carrying on the 1,300-year tradition of using trained birds to dive for fish. It is considered the ideal way to catch the sweet ayu river fish, and his family has a hereditary mandate to supply the delicacy to the Japanese imperial household.

The method, known as ukai, was once common in Japan and a version of it has also been practised in China. But today it is largely supported by tourists, who watch the fishermen and their birds bringing in the catch.

Now, environmental changes are making the fish ever more scarce and small, endangering the lifeline of the fisherman, known as usho, and their flocks.

“I go to the river every day so I can feel the changes,” Adachi said, drawing upon nearly four decades of working on the Nagara River in Oze, a town in central Gifu prefecture.

Come sundown between May and October, he boards a boat along with an assistant, a steersman, and about 10 cormorants leashed at the neck and body. A basket of flames swings out over the dark river, waking the ayu from resting spots among the stones below.

The cormorants catch them as they dart away, but the leash keeps the larger fish from going down the birds’ gullets. The birds are coaxed to release the fish into a bucket. And from a nearby observation boat, tourists take in the spectacle of splashing feathers and dancing fire.

As is common these days, the haul is tiny. Guests at a traditional ryokan inn run by the Adachi family are fed salted, grilled ayu, but it is supplied by a local fishmonger.

Adachi ascribes the dearth of fish to the weather, which he says has become more unpredictable, with heavier rains and flooding on the once calm river. And construction of flood barriers has led to smaller rocks and sand filling the river bottom, obstructing the larger rocks that form the ayu’s habitat.

“In the past, there were only big boulders, but now they’re small,” he said. “The sand and gravel has increased, and along with that the ayu have gotten smaller too.”

Environmental studies have confirmed his concerns. Temperatures in the Nagara River have risen to a high of 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), delaying the spawning period of the ayu by a month, said Gifu University associate professor Morihiro Harada.

The fish like to eat algae that grow on large stones, Harada said, but those rocks have become less common after repeated anti-flooding works carried out by river management authorities.

Down river from Oze, the usho of Gifu City has a larger, more tourism-oriented operation. Fleets of boats allow visitors to eat and drink as they watch the fishermen and birds.

The same environmental shifts also affect this business, with rough waters sometimes pushing the tourist boats off course or leading to cancellations.

To contend with the growing number of lost business days, an economic development body known as ORGAN set up an elevated riverside viewing deck on a trial basis, attempting to recreate the boat experience in evenings hosted by apprentice geishas and other traditional performers.

“We wanted to offer a more refined, higher-quality experience,” said ORGAN leader Yusuke Kaba.

Facing an uncertain future, Adachi can only honour the past and tend to the present. In his home, he prays before shrines dedicated to his usho ancestors. And in the yard, he tends to his 16 birds, one by one.

His son Toichiro helps out on the boat and is training to become the next master fisherman. Toichiro wants to carry on the tradition. But for now, the 22-year-old spends his days working with a computer at a maker of high-precision machine tools, the type of industry that transformed Japan’s economy and society in the post-war period.

“I want my son to inherit my job, but it’s tough to make a living,” Adachi said. “If we cannot catch fish any more, our motivation is gone and there’s no meaning in what we do.”

Media barred from reporting on election body’s actions at military bases or areas under martial law without clearance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved changes to a law that will curtail media coverage of next year’s presidential election, according to local news agencies.

The elections are due to be held in March. The 71-year-old president, who has led the country for 24 years, is expected to stand for another six-year term. Putin has not officially declared he will run, saying he will announce that only after parliament formally sets the election date.

The changes Putin greenlighted limit coverage of Central Election Commission sessions to registered media outlets, which could exclude freelancers or independent journalists, according to the reports on Tuesday.

The amendments prohibit media from reporting on the commission’s actions at military bases or in areas under martial law without advance clearance from regional and military authorities.

They also bar the publication of any campaign content on “blocked sources”, referring to restricted websites and social media services.

Under an intensifying crackdown on the opposition and the flow of information, Russia has banned an array of websites and services, including Facebook and Instagram.

To enforce this ban, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media also reportedly plans to block certain virtual private networks (VPNs) that Russians widely use to bypass internet restrictions.

The state-owned news agency RIA quoted the ministry on Sunday as saying that it could block certain “VPN services and VPN protocols” that an expert commission identifies as a “threat.”

Intensifying crackdown

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it has clamped down on independent and dissenting media voices, watchdogs have said.

Hundreds of journalists have gone into exile as state censors have closed many respected independent media outlets and launched criminal cases against prominent journalists and regional bloggers.

“After Russian tanks entered Ukraine, the authorities switched to a scorched-earth strategy that has turned Russia’s media landscape into a wasteland,” Amnesty International’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Marie Struthers, said in March 2022.

Russian polling agencies have found that Putin’s approval rating remains high – even as much as 82 percent in October. He appears easily poised to win if he runs for re-election.

Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “I have no doubt that if he puts forward his candidacy, he will win confidently.”

Washington, DC – Jeers erupted at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, DC, when political analyst Van Jones called for the bombing of Gaza to stop.

Jones had condemned anti-Semitism and voiced support for Israel in his remarks to the March for Israel, a demonstration that brought tens of thousands of protesters on Tuesday to the National Mall, a park in the heart of the United States capital.

But it was Jones’s proclamation that he was a “peace guy” that drew rumbles from the crowd.

“I pray for peace — no more rockets from Gaza and no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza. God, protect the children,” he said.

The initial boos against him quickly turned into chants of “no ceasefire”. The crowd had gathered to back Israel’s war in Gaza and to call for the release of more than 200 captives held by the Palestinian group Hamas.

On October 7, Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people. In response, Israel has led a military offensive against Gaza, a small, densely-packed Palestinian strip that is home to 2.3 million people. Israeli attacks have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.

Tuesday’s demonstration follows a major protest by Palestinian rights advocates in Washington, DC, 10 days earlier.

But this march drew top members of the US Congress from both major parties, including the Speaker of the House of Representative Mike Johnson and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of whom addressed the crowd.

“The calls for a ceasefire are outrageous,” Johnson said. His statement was met with more chants of “no ceasefire”, this time approvingly.

Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke at the rally as well. So did John Hagee, a right-wing Christian pastor who has been accused of stoking both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

Hagee came under fire in 2008 after an old sermon resurfaced in which he described Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as a “hunter” sent by God to push Jewish people to move to Israel.

The administration of President Joe Biden was also represented at the rally by Deborah Lipstadt, the US envoy to combat anti-Semitism.

The broad ideological spectrum at the protest highlighted the US’s bipartisan support for Israel.

“Bring them home,” the protesters chanted, referring to the captives in Gaza, as they waved Israeli and American flags.

Leading rights groups have accused Israel of violating international law during the war and attacking civilian targets, including residential neighbourhoods, hospitals and schools housing displaced people. United Nations experts have also warned of the risk of genocide against the Palestinian people.

When asked about the casualties in Gaza, many demonstrators expressed sympathy for Palestinians, but they blamed Hamas for the violence, accusing the group of using civilians as “human shields”.

Many held signs proclaiming Israel’s boundary from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The messages aimed to counter the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — something Palestinian rights supporters consider an aspirational call for freedom and equality.

Al Jazeera spoke to some of the protesters at Tuesday’s event. Here’s what they had to say:

Stu Weiss: ‘What occupation?’

Stu Weiss, a protester from New Jersey, held a sign saying that the 1,200 Israelis killed on October 7 would amount to 48,000 Americans relative to the size of the population.

Weiss said his message aims to make people think about the scale of the atrocities committed by Hamas. He added that Hamas is also responsible for the Palestinian deaths in Gaza, claiming that the group prevented people from fleeing south.

In reality, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been displaced from the north of Gaza, and Israel has continued to bomb southern towns where it told residents to go. An estimated one out of every 200 Palestinians in Gaza has died.

Weiss said that, by the end of the conflict, he would like to see “Hamas gone and Israelis living in peace with the Palestinian people”.

“They’re taught to hate Jews and Israel,” he said of Palestinians. Asked whether Israel’s occupation of Gaza contributed to hostility in the conflict, Weiss responded, “What occupation?”

James McLaughlin: ‘They’re coming for us next’

James McLaughlin, a demonstrator from Philadelphia, said there can never be a ceasefire until Israel destroys Hamas.

“They’re coming for the Jews. And they’re coming for us next — all of Western civilisation. So as a bulwark, Western civilisation is the bedrock of my faith. I totally stand with Israel,” McLaughlin told Al Jazeera.

He displayed a sign that read, “Christians stand with Israel.”

Rima: ‘Israel is our land’

Rima, a protester who chose to identify by her first name only, carried a large green placard saying, “From the river to the sea, Israel is all you’ll see.”

“Israel is our indigenous land, and it’s always going to be ours. This is where Jews come from. They were there before Arabs. They were there before anyone else,” Rima told Al Jazeera.

Evan: ‘Hard to imagine a good outcome’

Evan, a demonstrator who also wanted to be identified by his first name only, waved a large Israeli flag and stressed that Hamas started the war.

He voiced support for what he called Israel’s “right to defend itself”. Still, he expressed a grim outlook for the future as he reflected on what would happen after the current conflict.

“It’s hard to imagine a good outcome, no matter what. Israel has probably created another generation of people who will hate them. And that’s a consequence of war. Anyone who’s lost a parent, a child, a loved one, a cousin — killed in a thing — cannot be expected to embrace or forgive,” Evan said.

“It’s unfortunate. But I can’t sit here and say to Israel, ‘You have to get out now.’”

Minna Shezaf: Conflict is ‘terrifying’

Minna Shezaf, a demonstrator from Washington, DC, who has lived in Israel, said she was at the rally to express solidarity with Israel and praised Biden’s handling of the crisis as “admirable”.

Shezaf added that the conflict could take a “terrifying” turn if the armed group Hezbollah gets further involved in the war.

The Lebanese group has been launching attacks on Israeli troops almost daily in support of Gaza. Israel, in turn, has been retaliating by bombing areas across its shared border with Lebanon.

Asked about the mounting death toll in Gaza, Shezaf said, “It’s terrible what Hamas is doing to the people of Gaza. It’s a human rights violation.”